View report page

12
Hampstead was growing rapidly at this period and the
following are the census figures for the latter half of the nineteenth
century.
1851 11,986 1881 45,436
1861 19,104 1891 68,425
1871 32,271 1901 81,942
Hampstead always appears to have had a larger excess of
females than other parts of London or of the country. In 1881 there
were 159 females to every 100 males. Fifty years later in 1931 the
figure was still 155 females for every 100 males. This figure
reduced in 1951 to 139 and in 1961 to 127. The average for England
and Wales is about 107 females to every 100 males.
One of the main preoccupations in the latter half of the
nineteenth century was infectious disease. There were major
epidemics of smallpox and the Metropolitan Asylums Board, which
was responsible for the fever hospitals, admitted 15,171 cases of
smallpox between 1876 and October, 1879. Of these patients 2,677
(or 17.6 per cent.) died.
During 1881 there were 41 cases of smallpox in Hampstead
and of these 24 were admitted to hospital and 17 were treated at
home - of these, four died in hospital and two died at home.
At this time there was considerable belief that the infection
was airborne and there was strong objection to the hospital (now the
Royal Free Hospital, Lawn Road) being used for the reception of
smallpox cases because of the number of houses in the immediate
vicinity.
Investigations were carried out to find the number of persons
living within a quarter of a mile of the hospital and those living
between a quarter and a half a mile away, and it was shown that after
the hospital had been used for smallpox cases for a short time that
in proportion to the population, the greatest number of new cases
of smallpox occurred in the immediate vicinity of the hospital and
that a greater number of new cases occurred in the area between a
quarter and half a mile from the hospital, than in the town as a whole,
Whilst from a modern statistical point of view it might be considered